Online report of the Progressive Review. For 54 years, the news while there's still time to do something about it.

June 19, 2017

The issue of war veterans in a police department

USA Today - The debate over the militarization of America’s police has focused on the accumulation of war-grade vehicles and artillery and the spread of paramilitary SWAT teams. What has gone largely unstudied, however, is the impact of military veterans migrating into law enforcement. Even as departments around the country have sought a cultural transformation from “warriors” to “guardians,” one in five police officers are literally warriors, returned from Afghanistan, Iraq or other assignments.

The majority of veterans return home and reintegrate with few problems, and most police leaders value having them on the force. They bring with them skills and discipline that police forces regard as assets. But an investigation by the USA Today Network and The Marshall Project indicates that the prevalence of military veterans also complicates relations between police and the communities they are meant to serve.

To the obvious question — are veterans quicker to resort to force in policing situations? — there is no conclusive answer. Reporters obtained data from two major-city law enforcement agencies and considerable anecdotal evidence suggesting veterans are more likely to get physical, and some police executives agree.

But any large-scale comparison of the use of force by veterans and non-veterans is hampered by a chronic lack of reliable, official record-keeping on police violence.

Some other conclusions about military veterans in the police force emerged more clearly:

Veterans who work as police are more vulnerable to self-destructive behavior — alcohol abuse, drug use and, attempted suicide.

Hiring preferences for former service members that tend to benefit whites disproportionately make it harder to build police forces that reflect and understand diverse communities, some police leaders say.

Most law enforcement agencies, because of factors including a culture of machismo and a number of legal restraints, do little or no mental health screening for officers who have returned from military deployment, and they provide little in the way of treatment.

SAY IT AGAIN, SAM

ABOUT THE EDITOR

The Review is edited by Sam Smith, who covered Washington under nine presidents, has edited the Progressive Review and its predecessors since 1964, wrote four books, been published in five anthologies, helped to start six organizations (including the DC Humanities Council, the national Green Party and the DC Statehood Party), was a plaintiff in three successful class action suits, served as a Coast Guard officer, and played in jazz bands for four decades.

ABOUT THE REVIEW

Regularly ahead of the curve, the Review has opposed federal drug policy for nearly 50 years, was a lonely media voice against the massive freeways planned for Washington, was an early advocate of bikeways and light rail, and helped spur the creation of the DC Statehood Party and the national Green Party,

In November 1990 it devoted an entire issue to the ecologically sound city and how to develop it. The article was republished widely.

Even before Clinton's nomination we exposed Arkansas political scandals that would later become major issues. .

We reported on NSA monitoring of U.S. phone calls in the 1990s, years before it became a major media story.

In 2003 editor Sam Smith wrote an article for Harper's comprised entirely of falsehoods about Iraq by Bush administration officials.

The Review started a web edition in 1995 when there were only 27,000 web sites worldwide. Today there are over 170 million active sites.

In 1987 we ran an article on AIDS. It was the first year that more than 1,000 men died of the disease.

In the 1980s, Thomas S Martin predicted in the Review that "Yugoslavia will eventually break up" and that "a challenge to the centralized soviet state" would occur as a result of devolutionary trends. Both happened.

In the 1970s we published a first person account of a then illegal abortion.

In 1971 we published our first article in support of single payer universal health care